


the false dichotomy of faith and belief

by ThaliaClio



Category: Constantine (TV), Hellblazer & Related Fandoms
Genre: Flashbacks, However you see it, Hurt/Comfort, John Constantine Kissing Dudes 2K14, John's dad was a terrible person, M/M, Or not, Past Child Abuse, Platonic Cuddling
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-15
Updated: 2014-12-15
Packaged: 2018-03-01 14:27:32
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,058
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2776382
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ThaliaClio/pseuds/ThaliaClio
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Thing is John has never questioned the existence of God.</p>
            </blockquote>





	the false dichotomy of faith and belief

**Author's Note:**

> Please note, I have not read the comics (yet, if Christmas works out the way I want it to). John's backstory is my own headcannon.

"I thought he didn’t believe in God,” Zed said.

Chas had picked her up at two in the morning, told her that John found a case. When she got into the old-style cab, she automatically climbed in the back and was shocked to see that John wasn’t riding shotgun. Chas didn’t explain and she didn’t ask, though. Not until he stopped in front of an old style cathedral and they went inside.

John was kneeling in a pew, head bowed and hands clasped. He was the picture of piety, a classic tableau of a good Christian man. It was _weird_. Chas was leaning against the door beside her. He looked at John while she looked at him. For a long minute, it didn’t seem like Chas was going to answer her.

“No. He believes just fine.”

Zed blinked. “John? Our John? A Christian man?”

“According to some definitions.”

Zed rolled her eyes and hit the bigger man’s arm. Chas finally turned to look at her. She was expecting some kind of humor, maybe, like he was teasing her. Mostly he just looked sad.

“I didn’t think there were all that many definitions for belief.” Chas considered her for a moment. Zed looked away, back at John. “I always wanted to believe. Still do.”

“Given what we see, it’s hard not to.”

Zed sighed. “This, this _stuff_ that we see, that we fight, it doesn’t mean there is a God. It doesn’t mean that there’s something omniscient and omnipotent. It just means there’s more than the guy on the street with a gun.”

Chas hummed in response and turned back to John. He stood hurriedly, crossing himself sloppily before walking back towards them. He moved choppily and swiftly in sharp contrast to his usual callously confident behavior.

“Alright, let’s get a move on, yeah? Dead little girls may not be getting any deader, but there’s about to be a helluva lot more of ‘em.”

Chas wordlessly handed John a pack of cigarettes as soon as they left the looming church.

“Ta,” John said as he lit one, taking a deep drag. Zed knew she wasn’t imagining the shaking in his hands.

-

_Thomas Constantine was a drunken, cruel bastard. He blamed John for his wife’s death, said **God told me to punish you** every time he stubbed a cigarette out on his son’s chest. They went to church every Sunday where the priest said **God shall punish the wicked and the meek shall inherit the Earth.** And John knew he wasn’t meek and he knew he was being punished, so he knew he was wicked. _

_There’s a line in the Bible, Exodus 22:18 – thou shalt not suffer a witch to live. John first saw it when he was six years old. He was praying for forgiveness in the cupboard because he had taken Da’s pack of fags. He didn’t want to be punished that night. Da found him and used the entire pack, but John could only think about the bible verse._

-

She didn’t forget about the church and John’s shaking hands, but she never brought it up. Chas didn’t offer to explain, and John acted the same as he always did. It was weeks before anything changed.

Then they went to the healing church and found a fallen angel. She found out that John was apparently in regular contact with a (mostly) helpful angel of his own. Zed found herself automatically moving more of her chips into the ‘belief’ column, even if ‘disbelief’ wasn’t completely empty.

The day after they got back, Chas went into town to buy tools, groceries – whatever random request John had made at some point. John was smoking in the corner as he looked over an old text that smelled disturbingly of mold.

“Do you believe in God, John?”

John froze. Smoke curled out from between his lips. “Didn’t I already answer that question, love?”

Zed shrugged, stepping closer to the table. “Not really. Not directly. You mocked me, mocked those people. Said you didn’t have _faith_. But faith and belief aren’t the same thing, not really.”

John plucked his cigarette from his mouth and stared at the cherry on the end. His hands were steady. “No, no they really aren’t, eh?”

-

_Years passed. Bottles were emptied, cigarettes were put out and eventually some of them were John’s and not his Da’s. Somewhere in the middle, though, John died. He didn’t want to die, not really. But he was standing on the bridge and it was very late and very cold. His nose was bloody and his eyes were wet and his chest **burned**. He sat on the ledge and closed his eyes and… fell._

_He opened his eyes and remembered he couldn’t swim because Da never taught him and there was **no air**. He remembered screaming and watching the bubbles float higher while he sank lower. Then the world blurred and he couldn’t hear and it didn’t hurt so much when he closed his eyes this time. _

-

Chas came back before Zed could ask anything else or John could elaborate. She knew that Chas knew the answers to her questions and that John was no more or less likely to answer if his friend – their friend – was there, but she didn’t ask. The questions felt cutting and cruel and her tongue and she knew John’s answers would rub her raw like sandpaper. So she waited.

A week later and they were alone again. John took her to the woods to show her a psychically significant flower that had to be picked fresh at dawn. Standing in the cold morning light and watching the wind blow through the petals, her words felt softer.

“So you don’t have faith. Do you believe?”

John didn’t freeze this time, and Zed knew he knew what she was going to ask before she did. She spared a brief moment of amusement for the thought that maybe he was psychic too. He stayed crouched in the grass for another few heartbeats, picking the last of the flowers. When he straightened he sighed.

“I believe that soccer is a _terrible_ name for football. I believe that whiskey should never be watered down. And, yes, I believe in God.”

Zed felt her building frustration melt as he finished speaking. John wasn’t avoiding her gaze anymore. He looked her straight in the face, eyes searching for something. Judgment or pity, maybe. Really, though, Zed was confused.

“I don’t understand.”

“Walk,” John said. He stepped ahead without waiting for her and she had to scramble to follow. “I believe that God is real. I believe that he is omniscient and omnipotent. But I don’t _have faith_ in him,” he spat. “I think we’re Big Man’s great experiment. People, angels, demons, ghosts – all of us. We’re a game to ‘im.”

Zed hadn’t thought of anything to say by the time they got back to the millhouse.

-

_He opened his eyes and he was back on the bridge. He was dry and his nose was bloody and he could breathe (mostly) fine. There was a man sitting on the railing next to him with brown skin and gold eyes and big white wings. **Are you an angel?** John asked. **Yes. Don’t forget, John– God has plans for you.** And then the angel was gone. _

_John climbed down from the bridge and walked to the library where he stayed until midnight. He read about angels and demons and exorcisms and magic. When he came home late, his Da was angry, but John barely noticed the yelling and the cursing and the damnations. Because God had plans for him._

-

Chas found John sitting on the back porch, half a pack of cigarettes ground into the ash tray beside him. His sleeves were rolled up just high enough to see one or two circular scars in the crooks of his elbows, too big to be from needles. He sat down beside the smaller man, taking hold of one arm. John clenched one fist as Chas traced over the scars but didn’t pull away.

“Zed finally talked to you,” Chas said quietly.

John grunted and leaned against Chas, sagging like a marionette with its strings cut. “Belief. Faith. Annoying little concepts, eh?”

Chas let go of the arm, letting it fall into his lap, and pulled John closer to his side. He dropped a hand on top of the smaller man’s head, toying with the strands of his hair. “I guess. Kind of important, though.”

John blew out a gust of smoke and ashed his cigarette. “I don’t know what I’m doing, Chas. There’s a darkness rising, and I can feel it like I’m ten years old and in that river again.”

Chas didn’t speak for a moment, just kept stroking John’s hair. He’d heard the story before, knew that John came out of that river better than he went in, but it hurt to hear it, hurt to think about it. He wondered if it still hurt John late at night.

“I still pray sometimes, you know.”

“What do you pray for?” Chas asked, his cheek coming to rest beside his hand. He could feel John inhale, a shuddering, uneven breath.

“Faith. Evidence. _Something_. Me, I know I’m damned. I bloody deserve it. But you, Zed, _Astra_ – there has to be something else. Something that makes all this bullocks worth a damn.”

Chas breathed. John’s hair tickled his nose a little and caught in his beard. He wanted to shake him. Wanted to scream at him. To demand that he forgive himself for a mistake that Chas was growing to believe wasn’t even John’s in the first place.

Instead he pulled John close enough that he was practically on top of Chas, half-sitting on his lap, half-laying on his chest and just breathed.

“Tonight we’re going to go to sleep. Tomorrow we’re going to wake up. We’re going to eat breakfast and watch the map. You’ll fix some artifact or other that’s been bothering you. I’m going to plant a vegetable garden,” – John huffed out a laughed, breath warm even through Chas’s shirt – “, and we’re going to be okay. Whatever God there is, whatever plans he has, we are real and we are here, and He can wait.”

The soft “yeah” John murmured could have been a dismissal, but Chas could hear the smile, could feel it in the way John shifted to make himself more comfortable.

-

_Somewhere along the way John decided that God had no plans for anyone, least of all him. God wasn’t cruel enough to leave him with his father for 16 years or kind enough to find Chas for him after he left. He was 18 and high on cocaine from his good friend with a car Gary Lester, and it meant nothing to kiss him. It meant less to show him a **real** magic trick. _

_John was 18 and in love with being loved for the first time in his life. He had **real** and he was **helping**. His father was wrong and his priest was wrong and the stupid bloody angel was wrong. The world was a stage and they were all actors but the director was gone and the script was blank. _

-

When Zed woke up in the morning, the millhouse was disturbingly quiet.

“John?” She called out suspiciously. “Chas?”

The floorboards and bookshelves held no answers for her, and eventually she made her way to the porch. Leaving against the door she smiled.

Chas was leaning against the railing, mouth agape and snoring just a little. John had practically crawled into the older man’s lap, curling onto his legs and using him as a mattress. Chas’s arms was anchored around his shoulders and waist, anchoring him to his chest.

One of Chas’s eyes blinked open when she creaked open the door. She raised an eyebrow and gestured at the two of them. He only smiled a little and held a finger to his lips.

Zed shook her head as she walked inside towards the couch. When she came back outside, Chas blinked both eyes at her in confusion until she dropped a blanket over him and John. His smile grew when she handed him a pillow too.

“Thank you,” he mouthed silently, tucking it between the railing and his back.

Zed smiled and saluted as she went back inside.


End file.
